


Quantifiable Loss

by lizznotliz



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-29
Updated: 2016-02-29
Packaged: 2018-05-23 22:57:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6133036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizznotliz/pseuds/lizznotliz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are twenty-seven bones in the human hand. Luke knows this because the medical droid told him so as it attached his new hand to the cauterized remains of his forearm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quantifiable Loss

There are twenty-seven bones in the human hand.

Luke knows this because the medical droid told him so as it attached his new hand to the cauterized remains of his forearm.

Droids quantify everything, even loss. A battle might lose the Alliance _x_ soldiers, _y_ ships, and _z_ supplies. Luke lost twenty-seven bones.

This is information he does not share.

 

 

When he finds her, she is already twenty-seven bones short. She made it back up to her knees but no further, curled over herself with her arm cradled against her chest and her forehead pressed to the cool metal floor. The hallway reeks of copper and Luke nearly slips on the blood that's splashed around her.

She is whimpering and moaning and gritting her teeth and he's pretty sure she threw up at the other end of the hall.

He grabs the back of her tunic with his metal hand and hauls her upright and gets them both back to the ship before they lose anything else.

 

 

He forgot the legacy of that particular lightsaber. If he'd remembered, maybe she'd still have two hundred six bones.

 

 

 _Here is what the medics say:_ You're lucky a lightsaber cauterizes a wound immediately. You're lucky you didn't bleed out.

 _Here is what the medics don't know:_ Your phantom limb burns long after it's gone. Luke still wakes in the middle of the night, biting his blanket to keep from screaming because the bones he left on Cloud City are on fire.

 _Here is what Rey is learning:_ There is something that burns hotter than the sands of Jakku and it's sitting on the end of her stumped right arm.

 

 

Luke suggests that they take on Kylo Ren together. It's not, he swears, because he doesn't trust her, or because she's not ready. It's because his nephew is powerful and the Dark Side is powerful, and he has seen what it can do to good people and he'd rather they both made it out of this.

 _I am not like them,_ he thinks, recalling his old masters. _Not anymore._

Obi-Wan fought Vader alone and he fought to lose. Luke fought Vader alone and he lost twenty-seven bones. Luke fought the Emperor alone and he pissed himself screaming on the floor. It took two men - Luke and Anakin - to defeat the Dark Side. Luke figures it will take two of them to defeat the Dark Side again.

 _Together,_ Rey nods. She is fierce and determined and Luke swears he's looking into a mirror that's thirty years old.

 

 

He should have remembered exactly what he saw when he looked in a mirror thirty years ago. 

 

 

They all underestimate Kylo Ren's anger; even Ren himself looks startled at the ferocity of his own fighting. Luke goes down hard and fast, struggling to stay conscious, and as he battles back the darkness that hovers at the edge of his vision he looses sight of both his padawans.

_I have a bad feeling about this._

 

 

Rey has scars, dozens of them, hundreds of them, and when she was a child she used to count them nightly to see if she'd acquired anymore during the day without noticing. She would run the tips of her fingers along each nick and scratch and raised line and try to remember where she got them. She would kiss the palms of her hands, feeling the calluses and scars on her palms against the sensitive skin of her lips.

Her new hand is smooth and cold and she doesn't feel like herself anymore.

 

 

Luke follows the sound of the fighting when he can hear it and the visual evidence of Kylo Ren's anger when he can't. Scorch marks and blood paint the walls and he hurries as much as his old bones allow until he hears Rey scream.

He knows that scream.

His old bones know that scream, too.

He runs.

 

 

Finn comes to see her in the infirmary when the medics allow her visitors. He prods gently at her new hand with complete and utter fascination and he quizzes the medical droids on what sorts of metals were used in her prosthetic.

 _Rey, did you hear? It's the same kind as the plate in my back!_ Finn grins like the First Order has just collapsed at the snap of the General's fingers. She literally cannot comprehend his delight. _We're twins!_

 _No,_ she says darkly. _No, we're not. We're not twins._

Luke is standing just outside her door and he reaches out and catches Finn as he leaves. _It's not you,_ the old Jedi assures him. _It's not that she doesn't want you._

Finn nods, but the sadness hangs around his eyes.

_She doesn't want you to share her pain._

 

 

Rey sneaks out of the medical wing in the middle of the day, right out from under the droids. Luke finds her on the Falcon, knee deep in tools, scouring at her new hand with steel wool until the shiny metal is dull and nicked.

_Did you know,_ Luke starts, folding his legs underneath him and watching the steel wool move back and forth, back and forth over her knuckles, _that there are twenty-seven bones in the human hand?_

_I had more than twenty-seven scars on this hand,_ she tells him and he picks up a screwdriver and helps her make new ones. 


End file.
